原创 Vetinari clock: More possibilities emerge

Well, I hate to flog a dead horse (or a live one, for that matter), but some additional prospects have surfaced that deserve our consideration. First of all, my chum Steve Manley in the UK suggested a grouping of five switches as illustrated in Option H below.

Option H.
 

Just to remind you, Steve is the hero who is undertaking the daunting task of building his own 8x8x8 RGB LED cube from the ground up. I'm going to be bouncing over to the UK in a couple of weeks' time to visit my dear old mom. Steve is planning on driving up to Sheffield to quaff a beer or three with me, so he's currently working furiously on his cube, hoping to bring it with him to bedazzle all who see it.

Also, I was chatting with graphics guru Denis Crowder, who currently hangs his hat in Hawaii. Denis is the guy who created the layout for the new faceplates for the analogue meters that are the foundation of the Vetinari Clock. During our conversation, Denis suggested turning everything on its end, thereby giving the clock a more vertical orientation. Furthermore, Denis suggested adding a curved top, which he says was not uncommon in Art Deco pieces. This led to Option I as shown below.

Option I.
 

In this case, we have the large hour meter on the top, the medium minutes and seconds meters in the middle, and the small "tick-tock" meter at the bottom. The idea behind the diamond arrangement of switches is that they match the positioning of the meters, but I'm not sure whether I like this or not, so I tried a slightly different arrangement as illustrated in Option J below.

Option J.
 

On one hand, I sort of like the symmetry offered by this vertical orientation. On the other I sort of don't. The more I look at this, the more I think it's the sort of clock my parents might have owned. I keep on returning to look at our original horizontal orientation. The more I look at the horizontal versions, the more I like their asymmetrical qualities.

Having said all this, Denis has raised the issue of curves, which does deserve consideration, so I started pondering the possibility of adding curves to the horizontal presentation. The first step was to add circles around the three larger meters as illustrated below.

Option K (initial thoughts).
 

Now, you have to remember that I don’t really have a clue what I'm doing. I wish I'd been fortunate enough to have taken an industrial design course, although I'm not even sure if that was an option when I was a student. What I did here was to take the diameter D of each meter, divide it by 3 to give D/3, and then make the diameter of the surrounding circle 5 * D/3. That is, the gap between the edge of the meter and the edge of the surrounding circle is 1/3 bigger than the diameter of the meter, if you see what I mean. This resulted in Option K as illustrated below.

Option K.
 

I must admit that I'm quite taken with this but -- as a slight variation -- I decided to see if I would like it better if I "flattened the gaps" at the top as illustrated in Option L below.

Option L.
 

Well, I don’t know about you, but I discovered that I really didn’t care for this all that much. As always, of course, I would be interested to hear what you think.

And then there's one more point to ponder, which is that -- since this project's conception -- I have always envisaged my Vetinari clock as having an interestingly-shaped vacuum tube associated with it, where this tube is to be lit from within by tri-colored LEDs. (Do you recall this video about my earlier experiments in this arena?) In fact, I have a specific tube in mind as illustrated below.

 

I really like this tube for this project. It's not too big, and it's not too small. I can imagine it pulsing with light in time with the "tick-tock," possibly having an additional burst of activity at the end of each minute, and building up to a frenzy of activity at the top of each hour. Here's a to-scale drawing showing how this tube looks in relation to the rest of the clock.

Option A with vacuum tube.
 

In this case, I've also added a representation of the cabinet surrounding the clock. We still have to decide as to the type of wood that will be employed for this cabinet. Remembering that the front face is going to be formed from the aluminum-colored wood veneer that we discussed previously, and that the analogue meters have black Bakelite surrounds, I'm oscillating back and forth between dark red cheery and highly-polished ebony.

Furthermore, the clock cabinet will have either integral legs or an associated stand as illustrated below.

Option G with vacuum tube and stand.
 

I've pretty much set my heart on having the LED-lit vacuum tube. If so, I don’t really see a way to keep any of the curved cases, unless we return to a sort of cross between Options K and L and locate the vacuum tube between the minutes and seconds meters, directly above the "tick-tock" meter.

Cross between Options K, L, and A with vacuum tube.
 

Cross between Options K, L, and G with vacuum tube.
 

Hmm, I always liked the five vertical switches from Option G, but I think the right-angled upper right-hand corner is now too abrupt. Suppose we were to add a smaller curve centered on the top-most switch as illustrated below?

Cross between Options K, L, and G with an additional curve.
 

Now I'm totally confused. I like the simplicity of a simple rectangle, but I also enjoy the sophistication of the curves. I've gotten to the stage that I don't have a clue which direction to take. Once again, what do you think?